You have arrived at No Fun…
Show Date: Thursday, July 20th 2023
Venue: No Fun, 275 River Street, Troy, NY
Location: Troy, NY
Line-Up: Guerilla Toss, Bruiser & Bicycle, Foyer Red
Time: 7pm
We had so much fun at No Fun in Troy NY last night. Who knew Troy had such an amazing scene filled with incredibly talented people. No Fun is a venue created by Pint Sized located at 275 River St, Troy, NY 12180. They are truly a hub for experimental music in the Capital Region.
Here are some reason why I like the venue No Fun:
The instrument cable broke off into Arian’s guitar and they were eager to provide multiple tool boxes in order to help us try to fix it … to no avail, but its really the thought that counts. They also offered to drive home and get one of their own guitars. We ended up borrowing one from another band.
The sound person was very nice and did a great job mixing. Thanks for being an all around cool guy.
Great lights and decorations, plus a nice wide stage to bounce around upon….
Excellent foosball table
Great merchandise area with a table already set up and lights to boot
Fervent merchandise buyers in attendance. We sold a lot of apparel + music that night, which is always the most excellent thing for touring musicians.
Private green room for stretching and hyping yourself up when the show is packed and you need to bounce for 15 min or so. It was stocked with spicy salsa and a whole lot of assorted drinks.
After the show we had a post show Grateful Dead bounce session with all the excellent employees I was raving about.
A grasshopper even showed up for the last little bit of “Touch of Grey” looking for a “Touch of Grass”. Unfortunately he was going in the wrong direction, so we gently helped him find his way to some.
An extremely nice show goer brought a bouquet of fragrant, fresh herbs and tea flowers to the merch table and I made tea with it right before I went to bed.
Other bands on the bill were Foyer Red and Bruiser & Bicycle.
Foyer Red was kind of a jangly indie pop art rock band based out of Brooklyn NY. They just released an album on Carpark Records in May 2023 called “Yarn the Hours Away”. I very much enjoyed their set.
Brooklyn’s Foyer Red makes sweet yet abrasive songs that careen into delightfully unexpected places. They bounce between time signatures, boast bass lines and guitar riffs that clang and shimmer, and feature vocals that seamlessly crisscross over each other. Whenever the songs feel like they might dissolve into near-chaos, they’re reined in by earworm hooks and masterful leftfield pop songwriting. It’s organized clamor.
The band started as a trio with singer and clarinetist Elana Riordan, drummer Marco Ocampo, and singer/guitarist Mitch Myers. The three would email each other song ideas and record the ones that stuck. In 2021, they started playing music together in the same room and immediately came out with the Zigzag Wombat EP, which Pitchfork raved about, writing, “They make fuck-you crayon rock. At its best, their debut is a little bit freaky and more than a little bit funny.” Though they had been a band for only a few months, their self-recorded and charming debut proved that they had hit the ground running almost fully formed with a distinct, tongue-in-cheek, deconstructive take on indie rock.
Instead of sticking to their guns and retreading similar ground, Foyer Red reinvented itself as a five-piece, adding singer and guitarist Kristina Moore and bassist Eric Jaso. “We were working on a song called ‘Toy Wagon’ that needed a guest vocal, so we reached out to Kristina Moore, and as soon as we saw the way she approaches music, we knew we needed her in the band,” says Riordan. “Plus, Marco and Eric have held down a rhythm section together for seven years in Hypoluxo. They’re just super locked in and super tight and know each other so well.” As a quintet, Foyer Red’s songs have gotten fuller and stranger thanks to their egalitarian songwriting approach. “Everyone’s invited with their ideas,” says Riordan “We are always all encouraging each other to take the idea further, so everyone has an equal part in what we make.”
Emerging into a trepidatious live music scene, Foyer Red made the most of their time, playing all over New York and the Northeast with acts like Cola, Empath, Babehoven, Why Bonnie, Peaer, Momma, Mamalarky, and Diane Coffee; they embarked on their first tour in 2022 with New Orleans’ post-punk outfit Lawn, taking them through the midwest and into Chicago.
Foyer Red’s debut LP, Yarn the Hours Away, plays out as a collection of short stories, each with its environment and protagonist(s) meticulously crafted by the band, with lead singer, vocalist, and clarinetist Elana Riordan at the helm. Foyer Red’s debut EP, Zigzag Wombat, showcased their playfully chaotic arrangements, which bridge art-punk, math rock, and sweetly sung indie with a dash of the zoomies. The band synthesizes their homespun take on magical realist indie rock that was centered on their EP with their varied musical influences; taking cues from the otherworldly melodies of Cate Le Bon, Yucky Duster’s jangle-filled crayon rock, and the organized chaos of Deerhoof’s iconic polyrhythms. The songs that makeup Yarn the Hours Away are fantastical, surrealist stories that hinge on contemporary, post-digital life.
The lead single “Etc” captures this dynamic perfectly. Anchored by Eric Jaso’s hypnotizing bass line, the song unfolds with off-kilter call-and-response vocals between Riordan and Kristina Moore, their stilted deliveries bouncing around the mix. The track is searching but discontent with the algorithmic and claustrophobic realities of daily life: singer/guitarist Mitch Myers throws the song for a loop singing, “gathering information / will set you free once you’ve reached / 37 percent / of the database.” While there’s paranoia and cynicism undergirding the lyrics, the song itself is a thrilling and playful listen.
The songs on Yarn the Hours Away are uniformly exciting and compelling; each track feels distinct and sometimes even in direct conflict. The peppy opener “Plumbers Unite!” belies its themes of gamification of our daily lives and delves into the science fiction and fantasy songwriting of Foyer Red’s debut EP. Centered around a relentless rhythm section, their dueling vocals never abate; Moore and Riordan’s honey-sweet but getting more frantic as the song progresses, while Myers’ erratic talk-singing culminates in one final frustrated scream. Juxtapose this with “Gorgeous,” a lovely song about Riordan and drummer Marco Ocampo’s relationship that sees the band slowing their pace into a blissful sway. Riordan coos and sighs over the track while recalling “Marco-isms”; botched colloquialisms that Ocampo uses.
“Gorgeous” shares little in common with “Pocket,” a loose lamentation on late capitalism that touches on time travel and human evolution. Moore and Riordan’s exclamations are chopped up and used as rhythm instruments, layered over the intricately frenetic guitars of Myers and Moore. Foyer Red thrives on these extremes and contradictions. Where their first release was self-recorded, this LP found them in Figure8 Studios with a deadline. “It was really liberating,” says Jaso. “We're all just kind of throwing in our own voices and challenging each other to make the songs better.”
Yarn the Hours Away comes from a lyric on the closer “Toy Wagon.” The song that first marked the time Moore and the rest of the band worked together, a promising spark of a thrilling collaboration to come. “It harkens back to all of us coming together and spending the hours together in music,” says Moore. “There are few moments where you get to relax and exhale,” adds Riordan. “It's what happened when the five of us got together and started writing. We just wrote all of these out there songs and we didn't see a reason to dial that back. Its natural form is in its chaos and layered craziness.”
From Bandcamp